An Evening At Someone Else's Home
by sincerelymendacious
Summary: Elka has a vision at breakfast.


Hey, this was another live-write on the psychowhatsits discord server! I want to thank everyone who watched me create this thing! If you would like to witness me constantly misspell words and change my mind about thing that don't matter, please join the discord server!

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_Mom and Dad are already at it,_ Elka thought as she stood at the top of the stairs.

She could hear them loud and clear, as though she were sitting right at breakfast nook with them. "You know, I'm really not supposed to be doing this, Mabel," Dad said, a cautious catch to his voice.

"Doing what?" Mom replied. Something clattered forcefully to the table- the sound of a utensil hitting the oak surface a little harder than it should have. "It isn't like you've actually sold anything."

"Well, no, I haven't," Dad admitted. Elka took one step downward, her socked feet making silent contact with the next stair down. "I...really don't think anybody wants shampoo from Amway, dear." Dad only ever called Mom 'dear' in that soft tone whenever he was about to argue with her.

"You don't think," Mom said as Elka descended a little further down the steps.

"No, I don't. I'm pretty sure everyone's pretty content with the hair products they already use."

"But you don't know for certain." The screech of a chair being pushed back against the linoleum, and then the creak of Mom settling herself into it. "Because you haven't actually asked anyone."

A pause. Dad always got real quiet whenever Mom caught on to him. Elka stopped in the middle of the staircase, leaning against the railing. Her parents obviously hadn't realized that she was up and eavesdropping on them, otherwise they would have stopped arguing by now, and she wanted to see if Dad would try to explain himself or just acquiesce to Mom's demands.

He chose the former. "Mabel, it's really not professional to...sell things like this." Though she could not hear or see him, Elka imagined that Dad was rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Don't make it sound like you're trying to sell something, Barney," Mom said, an edge of irritation in her tone. "Just let it come up naturally."

"How exactly is hair care something that's going to come up naturally in a conversation?" Dad asked, sounding quite annoyed himself at this point. "We're Actuaries. We talk mostly about work." He let out a laugh that bordered on scornful.

"Okay, but at least one of your co-workers has to have split-ends, or a little dandruff" Mom insisted. She was, most likely, leaning forward, her hand on the outside of Dad's elbow- that was what she did whenever she and Dad argued, as though the little touch helped emphasize whatever point she was making. "Just find someone with some dandruff on their suit jacket, and then tactfully point it out." Dad made a noise of disbelief, but Mom continued, undaunted. "Then tell him that your wife has a special shampoo that can help with his...issue."

"And then he'll buy every bottle you have." A knife began slicing through something, the noise rapid and angry. "Yes, this hypothetical colleague of mine will definitely do that, instead of marching straight to H.R." Elka felt her stomach twisting into knots. Dad's tone was calm, with none of the annoyance that he must be feeling laced within it, but the sarcasm would not be lost on her mother.

Mom made a noise of disgust. "I can't believe you won't even try to help me out a little. You know that it's been harder for me now that Mrs. Sharp and Mrs. Carlessen have started their own downlines."

A small silence lapsed between her parents. And then, in a barely audible mutter, " I thought that sales were better than ever…"

That did it. Elka rushed the rest of the way down the steps, taking care to be as noisy as possible and then stomped her way over to the kitchen. Her parents did not like to argue in front of her (which was good, because she wasn't too fond of listening to them either), and she knew that announcing her presence in this manner would end the spat as effectively as water on a lit fuse.

She was right- the moment she entered the kitchen her parents went dead quiet, the atmosphere between them switching from displeased with each other to oddly guilty. "Elka!" Mom said, the angry red draining from her face at the sight of her daughter. "Do you have to make so much noise whenever you come down the stairs in the morning?" She tried to infuse the words with stern disapproval, but Elka caught the note of embarrassment at nearly getting caught in the middle of a fight that she tried to hide.

Dad looked over at her with something like relief in his tired blue eyes. "Good morning, Sunshine," he said, offering her a smile.

"Morning, Dad," Elka said. "Sorry, Mom. I thought I was late." She walked over to the table, and considered asking them what they were talking about, but then decided against it. "What's for breakfast?" she asked instead.

For a second, neither one of her parents answered, and it was like they had both forgotten what they were eating for a second. Then Mom looked down at her plate. "Pancakes!" she said quickly as she rose from her seat. "I made pancakes. Your's is in the oven, I'll go get it…" She rose from her chair and made to do just that.

As Mom busied herself with Elka's breakfast, she and her father took a moment to just...kind of look at each other. Dad looked like he'd need a second cup of coffee before he even got to work- there were lines under his eyes and by his mouth that looked so deep that they could have been carved there by somebody else, and the hair at the top of his head was sticking up- not a good look considering that it was thinning. _I don't know why Mom thinks he'd be any good at selling hair care products. _

She had intended to keep that thought to herself, but her Dad had overheard it anyway. _That's what I've been trying to tell her_, he replied to her, his eyes twinkling with humor. Mom came up behind her with the warm plate of pancakes in hand, so he spoke aloud so that she would not become suspicious (she hated it when they talked to each other telepathically, especially when they did it at the table). "So, what's the plan for you today, princess?" he asked, pushing his mostly uneaten food aside and leaning forward to listen to her better.

"Oh, um..." There wasn't much going on at school today that Elka knew of, but she wanted to at least try to continue the conversation. "We're making terrariums during science." She leaned a little to the left so that Mom could slide the pancakes off of the spatula and onto her plate.

"Terrariums, huh?" Dad's smile became a little broader. "Are you using soda bottles to make them?"

Elka was surprised that Dad had guessed correctly. "Yeah! Mrs. Bailey says that she saves her two-liters up every year so that her class can use them!" She cocked her head to the side. "How did you know?"

"We did the exact same thing when I was a kid." He sat up a little straighter, suddenly appearing more energized than he had when Elka had first come into the room. "What are you going to put in them?"

"I think it's just going to be dirt and grass seeds at first. But when the grass gets tall enough we're going to put grasshoppers in them." Elka wrinkled her nose, unsure of how she felt about that- it was a neat project in theory, but she wasn't crazy about bugs, especially ones that hopped all over the place.

Dad noticed her ambivalence. "You won't have to touch them," he assured her, "they just stay in their little habitat. Seeing them jump around is pretty neat."

"It sounds like an awful lot of mess," Mom said as she closed the oven door. She walked back to the table and sat down heavily. "You know that at least one of those kids is going to let their grasshoppers loose, and then the whole classroom will get infested." She shook her head as she passed the syrup over to Elka.

"And then our tax dollars will pay for the exterminators," Dad finished, giving Elka a conspiratorial look.

Mom side-eyed Dad for his comment, but paid it no further attention. "Perhaps you shouldn't talk about bugs at the breakfast table," she suggested as Elka poured curving lines of syrup over her pancakes. "What else are you doing at school today?"

Elka shrugged as she set the syrup down. "Just the usual stuff." She reached for her knife, but then aborted the motion, her right hand falling onto the table. There was a strange fluttering sensation at the back of her head, almost at the base of her neck. Elka brought her left hand up to the spot, her fingers threading through the strands of her hair.

"I thought I saw a flyer for the talent show on the bulletin board," Mom said, cutting into her pancake. The slice of the butter knife sawing through the soft cake seemed somehow louder than her voice.

"Talent show," Elka repeated, her mouth suddenly feeling quite dry. She wanted to take the cup of orange juice, but neither of her hands wanted to obey her- her right was content to stay where it was on the table, and her left wanted to continue flicking at her hair.

"Yes, why don't you sign up, sweetie," Mom said, not noticing anything amiss. "You've got such a flair for the dramatic, maybe you could sing a song from Annie. You liked that movie, didn't you?"

"Uh-huh." There was a small dot of syrup on the table. Elka's gaze zeroed in on that dot, and were unable to tear themselves away from it, even as the edges of her vision began to blur. The fluttering became a pulse, throbbing harder and harder with every second that passed, almost as strong as a heartbeat.

"Elka." Dad's voice echoed, as though he were calling her from very far away. "Elka, are you okay?"

"We could do your hair all nice and curly, maybe dye it red," Mom continued. "Amway just came out with this new type of dye, it would be a great way to advertise it."

Dad said something to Mom that Elka couldn't hear. Her senses were falling away- darkness was overtaking her vision, and the only things she could feel were the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed and the brush of her fingertips against the back of her skull. Her eyes fell closed, her lids heavy like lead. With great effort she managed to pry them open again.

When she did, the first thing that she noticed was that light was no longer streaming in through the curtains- the world outside was now dark. As was the room she was sitting in, which she quickly realized was not the kitchen in her home, but a living room in a house that she could not recall ever being in. She was sitting on a plum-colored couch instead of a wooden chair, in a room that was nearly as dark as the world outside.

"Endometriosis?"

There was someone sitting next to her on this couch. A lady, auburn hair pulled back in a nearly undone bun, her body bent forward so as to obscure her face. And there was someone sitting on the lady's other side- a man, young, blonde buzz-cut, crisp white dress-shirt with blue stripes, his hand on her back. His mouth was agape, and his brows were furrowed. He looked thoroughly confused. "I don't...what is that?" he was saying. He repeated the unfamiliar word again, his mouth stumbling over the syllables. "I don't know what that is…"

A sniff. "I don't know what it is either," the woman admitted, a small sob escaping from her lips. She straightened herself up, wiping at her eyes roughly. "Dr. Pasqual said that I had it, and that it meant that I…" A fresh bout of sobs racked her forward again. This time the man pulled her close as she wept, rubbing at her back soothingly. "It means I can't...I won't ever…"

"It's okay," the man said, pressing his face into her hair. "Shelby, it's alright, we'll figure something out."

Elka watched the scene, confused, The woman was one that she knew- she recognized her as Mrs. Carlessen, the nice young lady who had moved down the street a few months ago. She didn't know what was wrong with her- the term Endometriosis was foreign to her, but it must have been bad if it made both her and the man Elka assumed to be her husband so upset.

"Do you still love me?"

The answer to this was cut off by Elka's sudden return to the here and now- the here being the breakfast nook in her kitchen, the now sometime around 7:00 am on a Tuesday morning. There was a weight on her shoulder. Elka turned her head to see her father's large hand resting on it. "You back with us?" he asked, concern in both his voice and eyes.

"Y-yeah." Elka blinked several times, the world coming back into focus more and more with each one. "I'm back. I'm here." She felt Dad's hand squeeze her shoulder, and she felt a little more grounded in reality.

"Did you have a vision?" Mom asked, her eyes alighting with excitement.

"Mabel, please."

"Yes, I did," Elka replied, troubled, as she often was, by what she had seen. "It was about Mrs. Carlessen."

Mom gasped and scooted her chair closer to Elka's. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed her hand falling upon Elka's other shoulder. The tips of her nails pressed in through the fabric of Elka's sleeve. "What happened? What did you see?" she eagerly demanded to know.

"Mabel, enough. Give her a moment." Dad moved the hand that had been on Elka's shoulder up and ran it through her hair. "Are you okay?"

Elka nodded. "It wasn't that bad," she said, more to reassure her father than to satisfy her mother's curiosity.

Mom removed her hand, visibly disappointed. "Not that bad," she repeated, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest. She looked, Elka thought, almost like a toddler that had just been notified of their approaching bath time.

When Elka had said 'not that bad,' she had meant in comparison to some of the other things that she had seen. Though the vision had been relatively tame, it still left her feeling a bit disturbed, and she did want to talk about it. "I think she's sick. Mrs. Carlessen, I mean."

Mom perked up a bit at that. "Sick with what? Did she say?" She looked around the room, as though keeping an eye out for eavesdroppers and then said, in a low voice, "was it cancer?"

Elka shook her head. "No, it was something else. Endo-something." She tapped her chin, trying to think back to everything she had seen. "I don't think it's gonna kill her, but she kept saying that it meant that she couldn't do...something." She shrugged. "I don't know what, though."

"Hm." Mom rubbed her chin, mulling the information over. "Do you think it's bad enough for her to quit Amway?"

"I don't know."

Abruptly, Dad rose from his seat, the speed of his movements shaking the entire table. "I have to go," he muttered as he shoved his chair back in, his jaw tight.

Mom looked over at the clock hanging on the wall. "You don't have to leave for at least ten minutes," she said.

"I just remembered I had something I need to...take care of at the office." There was an undercurrent of emotion in his voice, something like anger and anxiety mixed together. It was still there even as he said goodbye to Elka. _I'll see you later, princess_, he thought to her as he bent to kiss her forehead.

_Bye, Dad._

"You should at least finish your breakfast," Mom said, audibly displeased.

"I've lost my appetite," Dad answered without looking back.

Elka watched her father as he snatched his briefcase up from the couch with telekinesis and then tore his jacket off the coat rack by the door along with his keys before storming out. She and her mother were quiet as his car pulled out of the driveway, the tires screeching on the concrete.

There were a few more moments of silence between them, a distant look coming into Mom's eyes. Then she blinked and it was gone, replaced by a fervor that made Elka shrink back a bit. "I guess it's just us girls now," she said, smiling in a way that didn't look like much of a smile. "Easier to gossip without a man around, anyway. So tell me, when do you think your vision is going to come true?"

Elka said that she wasn't sure. Mom hoped that it was soon. "The sooner she knows, the sooner we can...send her a get well card."


End file.
